Early in my career, whenever we communicated a probable miss in the production schedule and told our manager that we were “doing our best”, he would pull out this quote (we never missed a single unit!). “Failure is not an option“, made famous in the Apollo 13 movie, is another way to put it.

As a leader, setting the right tone is critical to create an entrepreneurial and innovative organization. People can achieve great things when you focus them on the goal and encourage them to stretch beyond what they believe is possible.